System and method for brand management using social networks

ABSTRACT

A system for brand management using social networks comprising an application server, social network crawler software modules, third party service integration software modules, an analytics server, a report generator, a search engine, a behavioral analysis engine, a recommendation engine, and a database. A user registers and provides data pertaining to a brand. Upon retrieving content from a plurality of social networks pertaining to the brand, the analytics server module analyzes the content to a content value specific to the brand among members of the social networks. The behavioral analysis engine obtains content elements generated by a first member a social network and analyzes the first member&#39;s behavior to compute an audience value of the first member. The report generator prepares reports specific to the brand, the reports comprising at least indicia of content value, indicia of audience value, and recommendations for improving member engagement with the brand.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent applicationSer. No. 14/294,074, titled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR BRAND MANAGEMENTUSING SOCIAL NETWORKS” and filed on Jun. 2, 2014, which is acontinuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/555,063, titled“SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR BRAND MANAGEMENT USING SOCIAL NETWORKS”, whichwas filed on Jul. 20, 2012, now issued as U.S. Pat. No. 8,745,217 onJun. 3, 2014, which claims priority to U.S. provisional patentapplication Ser. No. 61/509,918, titled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR BRANDMANAGEMENT USING SOCIAL NETWORKS,” which was filed on Jul. 20, 2011, thespecifications of each of which are hereby incorporated by reference intheir entirety.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention is in the field of brand management softwaresolutions, and more particularly in the field of using data pertainingto social media to identify recommended actions for optimally managing abrand.

2. Discussion of the State of the Art

Social networks have become one of the dominant forms of consumerinteraction with the Internet in the last few years. Accordingly,numerous innovations have been made by various players to addadvertising capabilities and to otherwise aid in the monetization ofsocial network traffic. As these social networks have become sodominant, enterprises—particularly those with strong consumerbrands—have moved more or less vigorously to adopt social networks forcorporate use. It is commonplace today, for example, for consumer brands(and some business-to-business brands as well) to monitor socialnetworks closely (particularly FACEBOOK™ and TWITTER™) in order to gagehow their customers perceive the brands and the products associated withthem. Moreover, many companies today are attempting to engage inmeaningful “conversations” with consumers, both customers andprospective customers, using social media, for example by responding tocomplaints made in social media (that is, content associated with socialnetworks), or by identifying community influencers and attempting tomarket to those individuals to reinforce a company's brand.

Several challenges are emerging as these trends take place. Becausethere are several social networks that are relevant to any given brand,each with its own usage paradigm, it is difficult for brand managers tocollate content from various social networks and make sense of it as anoverall picture of what a particular brand's perception among consumersis. It may also be difficult to identify which content to use for brandmarketing purposes.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The inventor has developed a system and method for providing automatedrecommendations to users for brand management using social media, therecommendations being driven by data collected from social media systemsand analyzed according to various embodiments of the invention. Theinvention comprises a data collection system which gathers data from aplurality of social media networks and ancillary sources, a dataanalysis system which analyzes the collected data to assess brandperformance of target brands, a user interface that allows brandmanagers and other users to establish goals, monitor brand presence insocial media, review and adopt recommendations intended to achieve theestablished goals, and measure progress in actual goal achievement, andan optimization software module coupled to the data analysis system thatuses analysis results to determine an optimum set of recommendations foreach user to achieve the user's identified goals, taking particularlyinto account previous results in response to previous goals and actionstaken to achieve those goals. Moreover, in some embodiments theinvention provides content curation, moderation and approval processes,and scoring to recommend which content to use and which audience toinvite as brand advocates.

According to a preferred embodiment of the invention, a system for brandmanagement using social networks is disclosed. The embodiment comprisesan application server, a plurality of social network crawler softwaremodules, a plurality of third party service integration softwaremodules, an analytics server, a report generator, a search engine, abehavioral analysis engine, a recommendation engine, and a database. Auser registers and provides data pertaining to a brand. Upon retrievingcontent from a plurality of social networks pertaining to the brand, theanalytics server module analyzes the content to a content value specificto the brand among members of the social networks. The behavioralanalysis engine obtains content elements generated by a first member asocial network and analyzes the first member's behavior to compute anaudience value of the first member.

The report generator prepares reports specific to the brand, the reportscomprising at least indicia of content value, indicia of audience value,and recommendations for improving member engagement with the brand.

According to various embodiments of the invention, various systems andmethods provide multi-social, multichannel stream integration (meaningstreams of updates from multiple social networks, received via multiplechannels, may be integrated into one or more single feed/update streams,which may in turn be provided to users in various ways, such as via useof widgets in web pages, via mobile applications, and the like). Variousembodiments may provide a common scoring system for user generatedcontent, providing an ability to have a common engagement and influencescore for user generated content from multiple social networks andmultiple channels, utilizing behavioral analysis of content creators andanalysis of audience engagement with specific content. According tovarious embodiments, identification and personalization of usergenerated testimonials may be provided, giving users an ability todetermine positive testimonial/endorsement through analysis of contentcreators, content types, and content engagement by audiences. Theinvention may provide an ability to surface a personalized set oftestimonials based on identifying information such as web visitorcookies or social network login data, mapping many attributes from thetestimonial. Moreover, various embodiments may provide for indexing oftestimonials, providing an ability to track, measure, and scoretestimonials using many attributes such as user feedback, user tagging,user and content segmentation, and the like. Various embodiments of theinvention may provide integration into enterprise and e-commercesystems, giving users an ability to integrate social media withenterprise and e-commerce systems. This may for example enable postingof testimonials with direct tagging to connect testimonials to productcatalog information. Users may be provided with an ability to curate,publish, and measure testimonials based on product catalog information.Various embodiments may provide an enhanced testimonial process, wherebythe system may generate, score, index, publish, and measure usergenerated testimonials from multiple channels and multiple socialnetworks, thus providing a closed loop process for brand management.

According to an embodiment of the invention, the system gathers datafrom a plurality of social media networks. Data is collected on behalfof users (both individual and enterprise users), and the data collectionsystem of the invention gathers data using a variety of approaches. Inone approach, data pertaining to identified competitors of a given useris obtained as well as data regarding the user or the user'sorganization, in order to establish overall sentiment levels amongconsumers toward the competitors' brands, to monitor trends in thoselevels, and to compare the competitors' social marketing effectivenessagainst that of the user or the user's organization. Competitors may beidentified explicitly by users, or may be identified implicitly by thesystem, for instance by using search terms normally associated with theuser's business within a search engine, and then parsing the searchresults to identify other participants in the user's market, and thenmonitoring social media networks for mentions of the potentialcompetitors. In some embodiments, information found pertaining to apotential competitor is compared to information provided eitherexplicitly by the user or obtainable from the user's public website inorder to determine how closely related the potential competitor'sbusiness is to the user's business. Users may be asked to confirmimplicit competitor selection, and in some embodiments an iterativeprocess of management of a competitor list is undertaken, with potentialcompetitors added as required, and with non-competitors removed from thelist either automatically or by user intervention.

Another source of data is general industry insights made available byjournalists, bloggers, analysts, and the like. And finally of courseinformation is proactively gathered from a wide range of social medianetworks. Such information may be gathered entirely automatically, forinstance in an embodiment of the invention by a set of search queriesgenerated by semantic analysis of the user's website and optionally acorpus of marketing documents provided by the user, and then parsing alarge number of web pages identified in the search results in order toidentify both competitors (as discussed above) and industrycommentators. In addition, data is gathered not only specifically abouta user and his company, his competitors, and his general industry, butalso more broadly about how consumers tend to behave generally onvarious social media networks in various situations. According to theinvention, as more data pertaining to consumer behaviors is obtained,the system will be able to better contextualize new behaviors andthereby to classify user's sentiments and actions in terms of acceptance(or not) of a given brand and its core promises or messages.

An important aspect of the present invention is the establishment by auser of goals pertaining to brand or product management. For instance,goals might include “achieve greater reach on Twitter”, or “counternegative press about a particular situation using social media”, or“improve consumer brand engagement”. These goals are generallyestablished by a user in a web-based user interface, although mobileuser interfaces are also contemplated by the inventor (and of courseusers may in some cases still prefer to use so-called “thick” or “rich”clients accessing the services of the invention via web services or anyother web-based programming interface method known in the art).According to the invention, each goal is associated with a plurality ofmetrics which, either directly or indirectly, are suitable for measuringa user's company's or brand's progress in achieving the goal. Forinstance, if a goal is “achieve greater reach on Twitter”, thenobviously a key metric will be the number of followers on TWITTER™ thatthe user's brand or company (or even the user herself) has. Less obviousmetrics in this situation might include, for example, a rate of growthof the number of TWITTER™ followers, or a weighted follower count,wherein weights for a given network member are established based on themember's social connectivity and likelihood of a given member'sretransmitting or commenting content provided by the user's company (orthe user herself).

Metrics used to measure progress toward goals are measured with respectto a user's company or brand, but also with respect to the user'scompetitors and to the general industry and industry segments to whichthe user's brand or company belongs. In this way a key benefit of theinvention, the comparison of a user's brand performance (either at aspecific time or dynamically as a function of time) to that ofcompetitors and applicable industries and industry segments is madepossible by preferred embodiments of the invention. Such comparisonsgreatly assist users in understanding where there are areas forimprovement, and where things are going well. Metrics are generally madeavailable to the user via a web interface that supports a variety ofwell-established reporting methods known in the art, including “drilldown” to allow a user to access more detailed information in order toinvestigate the causes for an observed phenomenon (for example, whenprogress against a metric is not meeting expectations despite the user'shaving carried out several recommendations). In addition, direct andderived metrics are used by the system of the invention to analyzeeffectiveness of actions taken, and to learn from the analysis whattypes of actions (whether recommended by the system or undertaken on auser's initiative directly) lead to what types of measurable results.These correlations (actions to metrics changes) may vary from industryto industry, from company or brand to company or brand, and even betweensocial media networks (for example, user behaviors on LinkedIn aregenerally quite different from those on Facebook, because users tend touse the two social media networks for quite different purposes).

According to the invention, once a user has provided a set of goals, andonce a body of metrics is in place to assess where the user'sorganization stands with respect to those goals, an optimizationsoftware module of the invention determines, via one of severalalgorithmic approaches, a plurality of recommendations to be made by thesystem to the user. Recommendations are determined based on what is mostlikely to move a user's key metrics closer to one or more goal states(sets of metric values that reflect satisfactory achievement of at leastone of the user-defined goals). In some cases, correlations betweenpossible actions and goal-based metrics, as in the case of “grow myreach on Twitter™ by getting me to 5000 followers by September 1st”—tomeasure progress toward the goal, one merely needs to compute a currentfollower count, a recent follower count, and one can readily compute arate of growth of follower count to determine if the goal is likely tobe met. Of course, when there is more data available (in this case, manydaily or weekly follower counts), then more refined predictiontechniques (many of which are well-known in the art) may be used. Inother cases, however, correctly identifying actions that, if taken, willtend to move a client closer to achieving a goal, can be quitechallenging in less straightforward situations. For example, it may notbe clear at all what actions will positively affect the goal of“improving brand engagement”. In such cases, a combination of heuristicsmay be created by humans (either the user or a member of staff of anorganization providing services according to the invention to aplurality of users) or by automated means (for example, use of neuralnetworks to determine “best fit” recommendation sets for a given type ofgoal. To facilitate use of automated recommendation generation, in someembodiments a number of predefined goals with configurable parametersare established by the system operator to facilitate at once both theestablishment of goals by users or clients and maintaining a highproportion of use of pre-established goals for which well-definedrecommendation sets have been developed in advance. As examples ofrecommendations that may be generated by the system according to theinvention, users may receive recommendations from the system of any ofthe following types: recommended content actions (such as posting atleast one blog post on product advantages per week; in some embodimentsprovides an example of a piece of content, such as for example text, oneor more links, a video, or a photo), actions to be taken (such asestablishing a Facebook™ fan page for the user's organization), bestpractices based on industry exemplars (such as adopting an industrystandard set of privacy terms to encourage user adoption and trust; inmost embodiments, systems according to the invention will maintainlibraries of best practices by industry and by subject, and willrecommend one or more of these when appropriate to assist in achievingone or more related goals), expert consultation (such as that a usershould consider retaining a search engine optimization consultant toreview ways to improve a blog's search engine performance; in preferredembodiments, maintains a network of experts and recommends particularexperts to users for specific situations, and in many cases acts as amiddleman or broker between producers and consumers of expert servicesrelated to social media brand management), campaigns (for instance,recommending that a user's organization establish a loyalty programadoption campaign using its Facebook™ fan page; in some embodiments willdetect campaigns being conducted by identified competitors and willrecommend related campaigns to the user to counter the effects of thecompetitor's campaign), and conversion applications (for example,improving the user experience from landing page to customer conversion;in a preferred embodiment provides access to its system to third-partysolution providers to allow them to offer their solutions to users, inwhich case the system may recommend that certain of such third-partyconversion applications are used in a given situation). Additionalexemplary actions recommended according to a preferred embodiment of theinvention comprise:

-   -   a. Follow—follow one or more people suggested by    -   b. Unfollow—unfollow one or more suggested people. The list of        Twitter™ handles to unfollow will be based on the behavior        exhibited by the Twitter™ users, such as unfollowing you after        you followed them and/or spamming (tweeting more than certain        times per hour, tweeting topics not relevant to your interests)    -   c. Engage—engage through direct message or @message with one or        more suggested people. In Facebook, will send a Facebook™        message to the recipient. Suggest influencers based on the        required frequency to keep the relationships    -   d. Tweet—tweet on influencer's content (tweets, blog posts,        etc.) will suggest influencers based on the value of the        influencer to its ecosystem and/or the focus area.    -   e. Retweet—retweet on influencer's suggested tweets.    -   f. Promote to Leader—promote one or more influencers to leader        board    -   g. Increase tweets/Increase posts—increase frequency of tweets        and posts to match or beat competition/industry    -   h. Avoid spammers—will identify potential spammers and will        suppress their tweets/posts    -   i. Change tweet/post timings—will suggest when to tweet based on        when a brand's audience is most active. This is determined based        on the actual behavior of the audience    -   j. Conversation topics—will identify the potential topics of        interest to the audience    -   k. Automatic @Reply    -   l. Automatic Direct Message after follow—will enable sending an        automatic direct message after a Twitter™ user follows    -   m. Increase post/tweet frequency

Examples of third-party conversion applications that might berecommended, according to the invention, comprise a social game thatengages fans and promotes virality, a newsletter sign-up application, ora coupon distribution application.

According to a preferred embodiment of the invention, end user behaviors(that is, behavior of users of social media such as Twitter, Facebook,LinkedIn, and the like) are used advantageously to help determinerecommendations to make to client users (that is, business users who areclients of a service delivered according to the invention). For example,as mentioned above, if certain Twitter™ end users are characterized bythe fact that they tend to routinely follow back when followed, whileothers may not do so, then a recommendation based on a goal of “achievegreater reach by gaining more followers” might be to follow a certainnumber of the former end users (those who generally follow back), andfollowing of those in the second group (who tend not to follow back)would be ignored. Similarly, content recommendations might be made basedon a result of analysis that showed, for example, that certainhighly-linked individuals (that is, certain influencers) tend toretransmit (retweet) messages pertaining to certain topics relevant to abusiness, but not to retransmit messages pertaining to other equallyrelevant topics. In such a situation, it would generally be desirable togenerate content recommendations that suggest posting content relatingto the first group of topics rather than the second group, in order tomaximize a probability that influential readers, upon seeing thenewly-created content, would retransmit at least some of the content andthus create “buzz” around messages of relevance to a client business.

When recommendations are generated by the system, in accordance withpreferred embodiments of the invention, users may elect to adopt,decline, or defer each recommendation. Default settings may be used, andconfigured by each user or organization, so that inactivity isinterpreted either as adoption, rejection, or deferral, as desired.According to some embodiments of the invention, recommendation adoptiondecisions are tracked by user, organization, time, and recommendationtype, and the results are analyzed to determine if there are issues witha given class of recommendations (and whether the issues are systemic orwhether they affect only a small number of users or organizations).Clearly it will be seen that such analysis is one means for refiningrecommendation generation, as users will be less likely to receiverecommendations they do not find useful or relevant after the system hashad the opportunity to track the user's response to a large number ofprevious recommendations of varying types.

According to some embodiments, some accepted recommendations areimplemented (fulfilled) automatically. For example, if a recommendationis to follow a list of known influencers on Twitter, and a user to whomthe recommendation is made accepts the recommendation, then the systemaccording to the invention will automatically execute the appropriatecommands using, for example using the Twitter™ application programminginterface (API). In some embodiments a scheduler is used, eitherautomatically or under user control or based on user configuration, toensure that an automated action is taken at specific times or atspecific rates (for example, it may be desirable to haveautomatically-generated tweets delivered at a steady rate to avoidoverloading Twitter™ or violating API access rules). In other cases,user action is required to implement a recommendation, as for examplewhen the system recommends that a user increase her frequency oftweeting (posting items on Twitter); in these cases the system mayanalyze actions taken and raise alerts if users do not take actionsbased on one or more recommendations that they explicitly accepted. Insome cases the system provides scheduling functions directly to users,as for example when according to some embodiments a user is allowed tobulk upload a large number of posts and to schedule them to be posted onher behalf at specified times or at a specified rate.

According to a preferred embodiment of the invention, a system for brandmanagement using social networks comprising an application server,social network crawler software modules, third party service integrationsoftware modules, an analytics server, a report generator, a searchengine, a behavioral analysis engine, a recommendation engine, and adatabase, is disclosed. A user registers and provides data pertaining toa brand. Upon retrieving content from a plurality of social networkspertaining to the brand, the analytics server module analyzes thecontent to a content value specific to the brand among members of thesocial networks. The behavioral analysis engine obtains content elementsgenerated by a first member a social network and analyzes the firstmember's behavior to compute an audience value of the first member. Thereport generator prepares reports specific to the brand, the reportscomprising at least indicia of content value, indicia of audience value,and recommendations for improving member engagement with the brand.

Because in preferred embodiments actions based on recommendations aretracked by the analysis system, and because progress toward achievinguser-adopted goals is similarly tracked, the system normally providesweb-based user interfaces that allow a user to assess progress towardmeeting goals, and in implementing specific recommendations, in order toallow users to fine-tune their activities and possibly to requestadditional action recommendations to better meet projected targets.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING FIGURES

The accompanying drawings illustrate several embodiments of theinvention and, together with the description, serve to explain theprinciples of the invention according to the embodiments. One skilled inthe art will recognize that the particular embodiments illustrated inthe drawings are merely exemplary, and are not intended to limit thescope of the present invention.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a hardware architecture of acomputing device used in various embodiments of the invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary logical architecturefor a client device, according to various embodiments of the invention.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary architecturalarrangement of clients, servers, and external services, according tovarious embodiments of the invention.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram of front-end applications for brandmanagement, according to a preferred embodiment.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of a software front-end stack, according to apreferred embodiment.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of a back-end architecture, according to apreferred embodiment.

FIG. 7 is an illustration of a webpage with embedded testimonials,according to an embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 8 is an illustration of a social customer's content, withcontextual data shown according to a preferred embodiment, according toan embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 9 is a method flow diagram illustrating network posting analysisprocess, according to an embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 10 is a method flow diagram illustrating a campaign process,according to an embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 11 is an illustration of an exemplary web-based user interface,according to an embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 12 is an illustration of an exemplary web-based user interface,according to an embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 13 is an illustration of an exemplary web-based user interface,according to an embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 14 is an illustration of an exemplary web-based user interface,according to an embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 15 is an illustration of an exemplary web-based user interface,according to an embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 16 is an illustration of an exemplary web-based user interface,according to an embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 17 is an illustration of an exemplary web-based user interface,according to an embodiment of the invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

One or more different inventions may be described in the presentapplication. Further, for one or more of the inventions describedherein, numerous alternative embodiments may be described; it should beunderstood that these are presented for illustrative purposes only. Thedescribed embodiments are not intended to be limiting in any sense. Oneor more of the inventions may be widely applicable to numerousembodiments, as is readily apparent from the disclosure. In general,embodiments are described in sufficient detail to enable those skilledin the art to practice one or more of the inventions, and it is to beunderstood that other embodiments may be utilized and that structural,logical, software, electrical and other changes may be made withoutdeparting from the scope of the particular inventions. Accordingly,those skilled in the art will recognize that one or more of theinventions may be practiced with various modifications and alterations.Particular features of one or more of the inventions may be describedwith reference to one or more particular embodiments or figures thatform a part of the present disclosure, and in which are shown, by way ofillustration, specific embodiments of one or more of the inventions. Itshould be understood, however, that such features are not limited tousage in the one or more particular embodiments or figures withreference to which they are described. The present disclosure is neithera literal description of all embodiments of one or more of theinventions nor a listing of features of one or more of the inventionsthat must be present in all embodiments.

Headings of sections provided in this patent application and the titleof this patent application are for convenience only, and are not to betaken as limiting the disclosure in any way.

Devices that are in communication with each other need not be incontinuous communication with each other, unless expressly specifiedotherwise. In addition, devices that are in communication with eachother may communicate directly or indirectly through one or moreintermediaries, logical or physical.

A description of an embodiment with several components in communicationwith each other does not imply that all such components are required. Tothe contrary, a variety of optional components may be described toillustrate a wide variety of possible embodiments of one or more of theinventions and in order to more fully illustrate one or more aspects ofthe inventions. Similarly, although process steps, method steps,algorithms or the like may be described in a sequential order, suchprocesses, methods and algorithms may generally be configured to work inalternate orders, unless specifically stated to the contrary. In otherwords, any sequence or order of steps that may be described in thispatent application does not, in and of itself, indicate a requirementthat the steps be performed in that order. The steps of describedprocesses may be performed in any order practical. Further, some stepsmay be performed simultaneously despite being described or implied asoccurring non-simultaneously (e.g., because one step is described afterthe other step). Moreover, the illustration of a process by itsdepiction in a drawing does not imply that the illustrated process isexclusive of other variations and modifications thereto, does not implythat the illustrated process or any of its steps are necessary to one ormore of the invention(s), and does not imply that the illustratedprocess is preferred. Also, steps are generally described once perembodiment, but this does not mean they must occur once, or that theymay only occur once each time a process, method, or algorithm is carriedout or executed. Some steps may be omitted in some embodiments or someoccurrences, or some steps may be executed more than once in a givenembodiment or occurrence.

When a single device or article is described, it will be readilyapparent that more than one device or article may be used in place of asingle device or article. Similarly, where more than one device orarticle is described, it will be readily apparent that a single deviceor article may be used in place of the more than one device or article.

The functionality or the features of a device may be alternativelyembodied by one or more other devices that are not explicitly describedas having such functionality or features. Thus, other embodiments of oneor more of the inventions need not include the device itself.

Techniques and mechanisms described or referenced herein will sometimesbe described in singular form for clarity. However, it should be notedthat particular embodiments include multiple iterations of a techniqueor multiple instantiations of a mechanism unless noted otherwise.Process descriptions or blocks in figures should be understood asrepresenting modules, segments, or portions of code which include one ormore executable instructions for implementing specific logical functionsor steps in the process. Alternate implementations are included withinthe scope of embodiments of the present invention in which, for example,functions may be executed out of order from that shown or discussed,including substantially concurrently or in reverse order, depending onthe functionality involved, as would be understood by those havingordinary skill in the art.

DEFINITIONS

A “database” or “data storage subsystem” (these terms may be consideredsubstantially synonymous), as used herein, is a system adapted for thelong-term storage, indexing, and retrieval of data, the retrievaltypically being via some sort of querying interface or language.“Database” may be used to refer to relational database managementsystems known in the art, but should not be considered to be limited tosuch systems. Many alternative database or data storage systemtechnologies have been, and indeed are being, introduced in the art,including but not limited to distributed non-relational data storagesystems such as Hadoop, column-oriented databases, in-memory databases,and the like. While various embodiments may preferentially employ one oranother of the various data storage subsystems available in the art (oravailable in the future), the invention should not be construed to be solimited, as any data storage architecture may be used according to theembodiments. Similarly, while in some cases one or more particular datastorage needs are described as being satisfied by separate components(for example, an expanded private capital markets database and aconfiguration database), these descriptions refer to functional uses ofdata storage systems and do not refer to their physical architecture.For instance, any group of data storage systems of databases referred toherein may be included together in a single database management systemoperating on a single machine, or they may be included in a singledatabase management system operating on a cluster of machines as isknown in the art. Similarly, any single database (such as an expandedprivate capital markets database) may be implemented on a singlemachine, on a set of machines using clustering technology, on severalmachines connected by one or more messaging systems known in the art, orin a master/slave arrangement common in the art. These examples shouldmake clear that no particular architectural approaches to databasemanagement is preferred according to the invention, and choice of datastorage technology is at the discretion of each implementer, withoutdeparting from the scope of the invention as claimed.

Similarly, preferred embodiments of the invention are described in termsof a web-based implementation, including components such as web serversand web application servers. However, such components are merelyexemplary of a means for providing services over a large-scale publicdata network such as the Internet, and other implementation choices maybe made without departing from the scope of the invention. For instance,while embodiments described herein deliver their services using webservices accessed via one or more webs servers that in turn interactwith one or more applications hosted on application servers, otherapproaches such as peer-to-peer networking, direct client-serverintegration using the Internet as a communication means between clientsand servers, or use of mobile applications interacting over a mobiledata network with a one or more dedicated servers are all possiblewithin the scope of the invention. Accordingly, all references to webservices, web servers, application servers, and an Internet should betaken as exemplary rather than limiting, as the inventive concept is nottied to these particular implementation choices.

Hardware Architecture

Generally, the techniques disclosed herein may be implemented onhardware or a combination of software and hardware. For example, theymay be implemented in an operating system kernel, in a separate userprocess, in a library package bound into network applications, on aspecially constructed machine, on an application-specific integratedcircuit (ASIC), or on a network interface card.

Software/hardware hybrid implementations of at least some of theembodiments disclosed herein may be implemented on a programmablenetwork-resident machine (which should be understood to includeintermittently connected network-aware machines) selectively activatedor reconfigured by a computer program stored in memory. Such networkdevices may have multiple network interfaces that may be configured ordesigned to utilize different types of network communication protocols.A general architecture for some of these machines may be disclosedherein in order to illustrate one or more exemplary means by which agiven unit of functionality may be implemented. According to specificembodiments, at least some of the features or functionalities of thevarious embodiments disclosed herein may be implemented on one or moregeneral-purpose computers associated with one or more networks, such asfor example an end-user computer system, a client computer, a networkserver or other server system, a mobile computing device (e.g., tabletcomputing device, mobile phone, smartphone, laptop, and the like), aconsumer electronic device, a music player, or any other suitableelectronic device, router, switch, or the like, or any combinationthereof. In at least some embodiments, at least some of the features orfunctionalities of the various embodiments disclosed herein may beimplemented in one or more virtualized computing environments (e.g.,network computing clouds, virtual machines hosted on one or morephysical computing machines, or the like).

Referring now to FIG. 1, there is shown a block diagram depicting anexemplary computing device 100 suitable for implementing at least aportion of the features or functionalities disclosed herein. Computingdevice 100 may be, for example, any one of the computing machines listedin the previous paragraph, or indeed any other electronic device capableof executing software- or hardware-based instructions according to oneor more programs stored in memory. Computing device 100 may be adaptedto communicate with a plurality of other computing devices, such asclients or servers, over communications networks such as a wide areanetwork a metropolitan area network, a local area network, a wirelessnetwork, the Internet, or any other network, using known protocols forsuch communication, whether wireless or wired.

In one embodiment, computing device 100 includes one or more centralprocessing units (CPU) 102, one or more interfaces 110, and one or morebusses 106 (such as a peripheral component interconnect (PCI) bus). Whenacting under the control of appropriate software or firmware, CPU 102may be responsible for implementing specific functions associated withthe functions of a specifically configured computing device or machine.For example, in at least one embodiment, a computing device 100 may beconfigured or designed to function as a server system utilizing CPU 102,local memory 101 and/or remote memory 120, and interface(s) 110. In atleast one embodiment, CPU 102 may be caused to perform one or more ofthe different types of functions and/or operations under the control ofsoftware modules or components, which for example, may include anoperating system and any appropriate applications software, drivers, andthe like.

CPU 102 may include one or more processors 103 such as, for example, aprocessor from one of the Intel, ARM, Qualcomm, and AMD families ofmicroprocessors. In some embodiments, processors 103 may includespecially designed hardware such as application-specific integratedcircuits (ASICs), electrically erasable programmable read-only memories(EEPROMs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and so forth, forcontrolling operations of computing device 100. In a specificembodiment, a local memory 101 (such as non-volatile random accessmemory (RAM) and/or read-only memory (ROM), including for example one ormore levels of cached memory) may also form part of CPU 102. However,there are many different ways in which memory may be coupled to system100. Memory 101 may be used for a variety of purposes such as, forexample, caching and/or storing data, programming instructions, and thelike.

As used herein, the term “processor” is not limited merely to thoseintegrated circuits referred to in the art as a processor, a mobileprocessor, or a microprocessor, but broadly refers to a microcontroller,a microcomputer, a programmable logic controller, anapplication-specific integrated circuit, and any other programmablecircuit.

In one embodiment, interfaces 110 are provided as network interfacecards (NICs). Generally, NICs control the sending and receiving of datapackets over a computer network; other types of interfaces 110 may forexample support other peripherals used with computing device 100. Amongthe interfaces that may be provided are Ethernet interfaces, frame relayinterfaces, cable interfaces, DSL interfaces, token ring interfaces,graphics interfaces, and the like. In addition, various types ofinterfaces may be provided such as, for example, universal serial bus(USB), Serial, Ethernet, Firewire, PCI, parallel, radio frequency (RF),Bluetooth, near-field communications (e.g., using near-field magnetics),802.11 (WiFi), frame relay, TCP/IP, ISDN, fast Ethernet interfaces,Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM)interfaces, high-speed serial interface (HSSI) interfaces, Point of Sale(POS) interfaces, fiber data distributed interfaces (FDDIs), and thelike. Generally, such interfaces 110 may include ports appropriate forcommunication with appropriate media. In some cases, they may alsoinclude an independent processor and, in some instances, volatile and/ornon-volatile memory (e.g., RAM).

Although the system shown in FIG. 1 illustrates one specificarchitecture for a computing device 100 for implementing one or more ofthe inventions described herein, it is by no means the only devicearchitecture on which at least a portion of the features and techniquesdescribed herein may be implemented. For example, architectures havingone or any number of processors 103 may be used, and such processors 103may be present in a single device or distributed among any number ofdevices. In one embodiment, a single processor 103 handlescommunications as well as routing computations, while in otherembodiments a separate dedicated communications processor may beprovided. In various embodiments, different types of features orfunctionalities may be implemented in a system according to theinvention that includes a client device (such as a tablet device orsmartphone running client software) and server systems (such as a serversystem described in more detail below).

Regardless of network device configuration, the system of the presentinvention may employ one or more memories or memory modules (such as,for example, remote memory block 120 and local memory 101) configured tostore data, program instructions for the general-purpose networkoperations, or other information relating to the functionality of theembodiments described herein (or any combinations of the above). Programinstructions may control execution of or comprise an operating systemand/or one or more applications, for example. Memory 120 or memories101, 120 may also be configured to store data structures, configurationdata, encryption data, historical system operations information, or anyother specific or generic non-program information described herein.

Because such information and program instructions may be employed toimplement one or more systems or methods described herein, at least somenetwork device embodiments may include nontransitory machine-readablestorage media, which, for example, may be configured or designed tostore program instructions, state information, and the like forperforming various operations described herein. Examples of suchnontransitory machine-readable storage media include, but are notlimited to, magnetic media such as hard disks, floppy disks, andmagnetic tape; optical media such as CD-ROM disks; magneto-optical mediasuch as optical disks, and hardware devices that are speciallyconfigured to store and perform program instructions, such as read-onlymemory devices (ROM), flash memory, solid state drives, memristormemory, random access memory (RAM), and the like. Examples of programinstructions include both object code, such as may be produced by acompiler, machine code, such as may be produced by an assembler or alinker, byte code, such as may be generated by for example a Javacompiler and may be executed using a Java virtual machine or equivalent,or files containing higher level code that may be executed by thecomputer using an interpreter (for example, scripts written in Python,Perl, Ruby, Groovy, or any other scripting language).

In some embodiments, systems according to the present invention may beimplemented on a standalone computing system. Referring now to FIG. 2,there is shown a block diagram depicting a typical exemplaryarchitecture of one or more embodiments or components thereof on astandalone computing system. Computing device 200 includes processors210 that may run software that carry out one or more functions orapplications of embodiments of the invention, such as for example aclient application 230. Processors 210 may carry out computinginstructions under control of an operating system 220 such as, forexample, a version of Microsoft's Windows operating system, Apple's MacOS/X or iOS operating systems, some variety of the Linux operatingsystem, Google's Android operating system, or the like. In many cases,one or more shared services 225 may be operable in system 200, and maybe useful for providing common services to client applications 230.Services 225 may for example be Windows services, user-space commonservices in a Linux environment, or any other type of common servicearchitecture used with operating system 210. Input devices 270 may be ofany type suitable for receiving user input, including for example akeyboard, touchscreen, microphone (for example, for voice input), mouse,touchpad, trackball, or any combination thereof. Output devices 260 maybe of any type suitable for providing output to one or more users,whether remote or local to system 200, and may include for example oneor more screens for visual output, speakers, printers, or anycombination thereof. Memory 240 may be random-access memory having anystructure and architecture known in the art, for use by processors 210,for example to run software. Storage devices 250 may be any magnetic,optical, mechanical, memristor, or electrical storage device for storageof data in digital form. Examples of storage devices 250 include flashmemory, magnetic hard drive, CD-ROM, and/or the like.

In some embodiments, systems of the present invention may be implementedon a distributed computing network, such as one having any number ofclients and/or servers. Referring now to FIG. 3, there is shown a blockdiagram depicting an exemplary architecture for implementing at least aportion of a system according to an embodiment of the invention on adistributed computing network. According to the embodiment, any numberof clients 330 may be provided. Each client 330 may run software forimplementing client-side portions of the present invention; clients maycomprise a system 200 such as that illustrated in FIG. 2. In addition,any number of servers 320 may be provided for handling requests receivedfrom one or more clients 330. Clients 330 and servers 320 maycommunicate with one another via one or more electronic networks 310,which may be in various embodiments of the Internet, a wide areanetwork, a mobile telephony network, a wireless network (such as WiFi,Wimax, and so forth), or a local area network (or indeed any networktopology known in the art; the invention does not prefer any one networktopology over any other). Networks 310 may be implemented using anyknown network protocols, including for example wired and/or wirelessprotocols.

In addition, in some embodiments, servers 320 may call external services370 when needed to obtain additional information, or to refer toadditional data concerning a particular call. Communications withexternal services 370 may take place, for example, via one or morenetworks 310. In various embodiments, external services 370 may compriseweb-enabled services or functionality related to or installed on thehardware device itself. For example, in an embodiment where clientapplications 230 are implemented on a smartphone or other electronicdevice, client applications 230 may obtain information stored in aserver system 320 in the cloud or on an external service 370 deployed onone or more of a particular enterprise's or user's premises.

In some embodiments of the invention, clients 330 or servers 320 (orboth) may make use of one or more specialized services or appliancesthat may be deployed locally or remotely across one or more networks310. For example, one or more databases 340 may be used or referred toby one or more embodiments of the invention. It should be understood byone having ordinary skill in the art that databases 340 may be arrangedin a wide variety of architectures and using a wide variety of dataaccess and manipulation means. For example, in various embodiments oneor more databases 340 may comprise a relational database system using astructured query language (SQL), while others may comprise analternative data storage technology such as those referred to in the artas “NoSQL” (for example, Hadoop, MapReduce, BigTable, and so forth). Insome embodiments variant database architectures such as column-orienteddatabases, in-memory databases, clustered databases, distributeddatabases, or even flat file data repositories may be used according tothe invention. It will be appreciated by one having ordinary skill inthe art that any combination of known or future database technologiesmay be used as appropriate, unless a specific database technology or aspecific arrangement of components is specified for a particularembodiment herein. Moreover, it should be appreciated that the term“database” as used herein may refer to a physical database machine, acluster of machines acting as a single database system, or a logicaldatabase within an overall database management system. Unless a specificmeaning is specified for a given use of the term “database”, it shouldbe construed to mean any of these senses of the word, all of which areunderstood as a plain meaning of the term “database” by those havingordinary skill in the art.

Similarly, most embodiments of the invention may make use of one or moresecurity systems 360 and configuration systems 350. Security andconfiguration management are common information technology (IT) and webfunctions, and some amount of each are generally associated with any ITor web systems. It should be understood by one having ordinary skill inthe art that any configuration or security subsystems known in the artnow or in the future may be used in conjunction with embodiments of theinvention without limitation, unless a specific security 360 orconfiguration 350 system or approach is specifically required by thedescription of any specific embodiment.

In various embodiments, functionality for implementing systems ormethods of the present invention may be distributed among any number ofclient and/or server components. For example, various software modulesmay be implemented for performing various functions in connection withthe present invention, and such modules can be variously implemented torun on server and/or client components.

Description of System Architecture

FIG. 4 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary architecture of asystem 400 for providing brand management services using data aggregatedfrom social media networks 420, according to a preferred embodiment ofthe invention. According to the embodiment, system 400 may be accessedby users via Internet 410 or an equivalent network (or in someembodiments a plurality of networks such as Internet 410), using aplurality of computing devices, such as a laptop computer 411, mobilephone or smartphone 412, a terminal or kiosk 413, or a tablet computer414. Data from social networks 420 is collected and processed by backendservices 407 such as web crawlers, information gatherers, processors,indexers, a behavior engine, and a recommendation engine. Data processedby backend services 407, such as social network client applications or“crawlers” which search for and retrieve data from social networkingservices, may then be stored in a plurality of data storage systems 402such as a MySQL or other relational database, or distributednon-relational databases 404 such as Hadoop HBase. Stored data may besearchable via a search engine 403 such as Apache™ Lucene. Data may beaccessed by a user via interface services 401, typically comprising aweb server, which may be any of the many well-known web server typesknown in the art, for example Microsoft™ Internet Information Server,Apache™ Web Server, IBM WebSphere Server, and so forth. It will beappreciated by one having ordinary skill in the art that any web servercapable of receiving standard web interaction requests (typically butnot necessarily made using hypertext transfer protocol HTTP orequivalent standard protocols) and serving web content to the requestormay be used according to the invention. Scalable architecture elementswhich may include such elements as a scripting engine 405 such asApache™ Thrift to create and manage services between a plurality ofsoftware languages internally (such as PHP, Rails, or C++ andderivatives) or messaging bus 406 such as Java™ Message Service (JMS) orApache™ ActiveMQ for handling communication between services andutilizing multiple data store architectures may be implemented, forexample implemented as a messaging software module 406 stored andoperating on a network-attached application server 450. In someembodiments, scripting engine 405 and messaging software module 406 maybe implemented together as software services running on applicationserver 450. It will be appreciated by one having ordinary skill in theart that such software elements as have been mentioned are exemplary,and many varied solutions for such roles exist and are in development,any of which may be used interchangeably to build a backendinfrastructure. It will be further appreciated that such elements may beomitted entirely from system 400 and their roles carried out by othercomponents. Users accessing system 400 may do so via a number ofweb-capable devices, each of which may have an off-the-shelf oroptimized interface application such as a mobile web browser on asmartphone 412. Users accessing in such a way will be able to viewcollected social network data presented by a backend 407 embedded withincontextually-relevant webpages, as determined by backend services 407and selected for implementation via front-end 401. In some embodiments,integration to third party services 461, such as customer relationshipmanagement (CRM) services and the like, may be achieved via one or morethird party service integration software modules 460. For example, it isoften preferable that users of a primary system such as a CRM system 461do not have to learn different user interface conventions when usingadd-on products or services from within the primary system. Thus, forexample, a user viewing content aggregated from multiple social networksaccording to the invention would be able to do so, according to theembodiment, within a primary system 461 such as a CRM system, usingfamiliar user interface conventions and elements of the primary system.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram illustrating user interface services 401comprising a plurality of front-end applications according to apreferred embodiment. According to the embodiment, a user may utilize avariety of applications to interact with a company website, manage hisuser profile and associated data, manage one or more endpoints for userinteraction (for example, configuring front end services to be able tointeract via the user's mobile device as well as via the user'scomputer), and access an internal administration tool for accessing andmanaging aggregated social network data within the system. A user mayinteract with web applications 510 such as a brand advocacy builder andsocial analytics software, which present data aggregated from socialnetworks which is relevant to the user's industry or company. A user mayalso view website content 511 such as their homepage and other staticwebpage content, allowing the viewing of content as it would be seen bya visitor to the webpage. This would allow a user to monitor theappearance of their brand and view what information is being presentedto other viewers, so that they may adjust accordingly via otherfront-end applications such as those for managing their user profile andsettings 520 and brand admin 521. With these tools, a user can managetheir profile within the system and set goals pertaining to brand orproduct management. These goals are associated with metrics for scoringaggregated social network data such that only high-scoring data ispresented to the user. A user may also use the front-end to view hostedendpoints such as social benchmarks 530, embeddable widgets 531 whichinclude embeddable code for placement into a webpage, and leaderboardFacebook™ apps 532. According to a preferred embodiment, exemplary codefor an embeddable widget 531 may be written as follows:

<div id=′rpdiv′></div><scriptsrc=′http://www.readypulse.com/js/iframe.js?divid=rpdiv&curation=52&size=webm&theme=&geturl=0&token=ccontent&width=640&height=′ type=′text/javascript′></script>

The above code describes the widget for embedded placement in a webpage,to display contextually-relevant social networking data such as producttestimonials and reviews. This data is not a direct feed from sourcessuch as Twitter™ or Facebook™ posts, it is monitored and scored by andonly high-scoring content is selected to maximize relevance andusefulness to a viewer. Furthermore, such a widget may be capable ofmulti-channel integration—that is, a widget may incorporate informationfrom a plurality of different sources which may be spread across aplurality of social media networks and formats, and combine them into asingle widget interface for consolidated viewing. A user may also usethe front-end to access an internal tool 525 for website administrationand provisioning, which will allow the configuration of data displayedto website viewers. It will be appreciated by one having ordinary skillin the art, of course, that there are many variations on such embed codethat could be utilized, according to the invention; the code listed hereis merely exemplary.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram illustration of the backend 407, comprising aplurality of social data aggregator services such as a Facebook™ crawler601, Twitter™ crawler 602, Klout™ client 603, and Bit.ly™ client 604,each of which may connect to its respective social media network tosearch for, request, or retrieve data such as a customer's personalattributes (name, gender, location, or other relevant and useful data),posts containing relevant product or service testimonial content, orposts containing relevant content pertaining to a company's competitors.It will be appreciated that such services are exemplary and that manymore are possible according to the invention and that services may beadded or omitted as appropriate as long as the core functionality ofsocial network monitoring and data collection is performed. Theseservices then interface via a one- or two-way data transfer to aninternal message bus 406 such as Apache™ ActiveMQ, which handles thecommunication between data collectors and data storage and processingvia services such as the illustrated social collector and router 605,analytics server 606, and search indexer 608 which interacts with dataretrieval and search libraries such as Apache™ Lucene or Elasticsearch™.Analytics server 606 stores analyzed data in a database 404 such asHadoop HBase, which stores data for and from a behavioral analysisengine 607 such as Hadoop. This data is then utilized by a dataaggregation and API server 609, which controls presentation of the datato the front-end 401 and a recommendations processor 610, which thenstores recommendation data in a database 402 such as for example a MySQLrelational database. As previously described, collected data may be froma plurality of sources potentially across a plurality of social medianetworks, and in such instances where multi-channel content is beingcollected, a common scoring system may be utilized such that a commonscoring system may be used according to behavioral analysis andengagement of content by an audience. It will be appreciated that thisarrangement is exemplary, and such a data store need not be physicallyseparate from database 404, and further that additional distributed datastorage may be utilized within the scope of the invention. Reportgenerator server 620 prepares and makes available to users a pluralityof reports specific to one or more brands managed by the user.Typically, reports comprise at least an indicia of content value, anindicia of audience value, and at least one recommendation to assist theuser in improving perception of or engagement with the one or morebrands by social network members.

FIG. 7 is an illustration of an exemplary storefront webpage 700,demonstrating the output of using embedded widget code as describedpreviously to add relevant information to a product page, increasing itsappeal to a potential customer viewing a virtual storefront online. Awebpage frame 701 is present, which displays contextually-relevantsocial network posts and data as determined by backend services.Exemplary content displayed as illustrated may comprise Twitter™ posts(“tweets”) 710, identifiable by an icon 711 displaying the Twitter™logo, Facebook™ posts 720 identifiable via an icon 721 displaying theFacebook™ logo, or LinkedIn™ posts 730 as identified by an icon 731displaying the LinkedIn™ logo. Such posts may display data useful to aviewer, such as the poster's name 713, post content text 714, and whenapplicable a photograph of the poster 712. Unlike a traditional “feed”,these posts are not streamed directly from their sources but havealready been processed and selected by backend processes for relevanceto the webpage content. Such postings may be integrated directly into ane-commerce storefront, enabling postings to be linked directly withproducts or services, and enabling “tagging” of product or serviceinformation with testimonial data.

FIG. 8 is an illustration of an exemplary social media posting 800 asone might be viewed by a social networking user or as it may appear to aservice retrieving data from a network such as crawlers previouslydescribed, illustrating exemplary data that may be utilized by backendprocesses in scoring against metrics such as relevance and determiningcontent usefulness for embedding into a webpage via a code widget aspreviously described. A social network posting traditionally includesseveral articles of information, such as the poster's name 801, whichmay be used to determine gender, compare against a list of knownindividuals in the industry, or other processing. Also displayed are theposting location 802, which may be used to score relevance within localmarkets, and posting date and time 803 which may be used to determinepatterns in posting behavior and relevance of the post. The post contentmay be checked for keywords 804 which give indication as to the topic ofthe post, relevance to key markets or products, and allow furtherprocessing to determine the nature and relevance of the post.Information from such a posting may be used to determine testimonial orendorsement scoring by backend services 407 according to a variety ofinformation as described above, such as personal identifiers regarding aposter or stored data within a poster's browser session information orcookies—optionally mapping a plurality of attributes to a postingimmediately based on known factors about a posting source. In this wayit may be possible to identify and personalize posting content and usethis personalization to develop and maintain a store of known advocatesor “top posters”, posters which maintain high scores for engagement orbrand advocacy. For example, behavioral analysis engine 607 may obtain aplurality of content elements generated by a first member of one or moresocial networks and analyze the first member's social behavior using theacquired content elements in order to compute an indicia of an audiencevalue of the first member. Furthermore, such information may enable auser to track, score, organize, and index testimonials and otherpostings based on their identifiers, further expanding functionality. Itwill be appreciated by one having skill in the art that such metrics areexemplary, and there are many ways to utilize and process such dataaccording to the invention.

FIG. 11 is an illustration of an exemplary web interface 1100 for aweb-based front-end application 510. As illustrated, applicationinterface 1100 may comprise a plurality of selectable categories such asAnalytics 1101, Testimonials 1102, Widgets 1103, Campaigns 1104, orManage Brand 1105, each of which may be selected by a user to tailor thedisplayed content, and each of which will be illustrated and describedin detail. Referring to FIG. 11, an Analytics tab 1101 may displaycontent comprising a company name, logo, or other identifying mark 1106,as well as further selectable tabs such as Overview 1110, Analytics1111, Audience 1112, Content 1113, or Reports 1114, each of which willbe illustrated and described in detail. As illustrated, an Overview tab1110 may present data comprising a date range 1121 which may alert auser to the range of data being displayed, a clickable button or otherUser Interface (UI) element 1122 for changing such a date range, a textelement 1123 which may alert a user to the currently-displayed audienceinformation such as Twitter™ or Facebook™ followers, a further textelement 1124 which may present a user with a number representing a totalsum or other metric of a selected audience, a further text element 1125which may provide a user with a relative metric indicating change in atotal sum 1124, a group of text, image, or other UI elements 1126 whichmay represent organization groupings of a selected audience (such asgender distribution, as illustrated), a graph or other image element1127 which may illustrate a comparative analysis of a user's brandagainst chosen competitors according to a selected audience and usingknown metric data for such an audience, a UI element 1130 which maypresent a user with a breakdown of known metrics within a selectedaudience, and a sidebar or other grouping element 1140 which may presenta user with more detailed information pertaining to a currently-selectedaudience. It will be appreciated by one having ordinary skill in the artthat such elements and their arrangement are exemplary, and that avariety of UI arrangements are possible according to the invention, andthat the specific arrangement may be user-configurable and variabledepending on several factors such as a web browser or internet-capabledevice being used (for example, a desktop personal computer mightdisplay information differently than a smartphone). As illustrated, abreakdown element 1130 may further comprise a clickable or selectablebutton or other UI element 1131 allowing a user to explore acurrently-selected audience, which might present a pop-up window or anew tab in a web browser, presenting further information regarding anaudience. A grouping element 1140 may further comprise a plurality ofclickable or selectable buttons or similar UI elements 1141 and 1142,which might allow a user to further explore organization categories ofan audience such as (as shown) top-rated advocates or top-rated tweets,as selected for display based on known metrics and data gathered andprocessed by backend services 407, and selected high-rated (Asdetermined by backend services 407) social media network postings may bedisplayed. As illustrated, a poster's information might be presented toa user for viewing, and such information might comprise a poster'sprofile picture 1143, a count of “retweets” 1144 or “mentions” 1145,illustrating a poster's interest in or loyalty to a user's brand, ortweet content 1146 such as text postings including keywords or phrasesrelevant to a user's brand. It will be appreciated that such postingsand textual content illustrated is purely exemplary, and that the actualcontent of postings and displayed content may vary widely.

FIG. 12 is an illustration of an exemplary web interface 1100 for aweb-based front-end application 510, particularly of an Analytics tab1111 within an Analytics category 1101. As illustrated previously, anAnalytics category 1101 may display content comprising a company name,logo, or other identifying mark 1106, as well as further selectable tabssuch as Overview 1110, Analytics 1111, Audience 1112, Content 1113, orReports 1114. An Analytics tab 1111 may further display contentcomprising organizational or grouping UI elements displaying totalnumber of Twitter™ followers 1201, net increase of such followers withina selected timeframe 1202, average net increase in followers within aselected timeframe 1203, a graph or other image element 1211representing metric information such as (as illustrated) minimum,maximum, and average followers, a title element 1210 for such a graph,and a further graph or image element 1220 illustrating a competitiveanalysis of a chosen metric (again, as illustrated in this exemplaryinterface, Twitter™ followers) compared against selected competitorswithin a user's industry. Such elements may be clickable or selectable,or otherwise able to be interacted with by a user, such as to tailortheir content—for example, a user might be able to click on a UI element1202, allowing user to alter the timeframe being represented in theelement's content. It will be appreciated by one having ordinary skillin the art that such elements and their arrangement is exemplary, andarrangements and specific construction or content may vary according tothe invention, and such variances may be necessary according to avariety of factors not relevant to or claimed by the invention—such as,as previously mentioned, a specific web browser or device a user isviewing an interface 1100 with.

FIG. 13 is an illustration of an exemplary web interface 1100 for aweb-based front-end application 510, particularly of a Content tab 1113within an Analytics category 1101. As illustrated previously, anAnalytics category 1101 may display content comprising a company name,logo, or other identifying mark 1106, as well as further selectable tabssuch as Overview 1110, Analytics 1111, Audience 1112, Content 1113, orReports 1114. As illustrated, a Content tab 1113 may display contentcomprising UI elements displaying an overall “Content Engagement Score”1301 as determined by an analytics server 606 using known data andmetrics, total number of social media networking posts 1302, number ofengaging posts 1303 as determined by an analysis of post content by ananalytics server 606, percentage of posts which are qualified as“engaging” 1304, and an overall “engagement index” 1305 representing acomparative quantification of a user's brand engagement within a socialmedia network to facilitate quick comparison against previously-reportedengagement indices, a competitive analysis graph or similar element 1220as described previously, providing a comparison of a user's brandagainst selected competitor brands with reference to a chosen metric,and a graph or similar image element 1306 illustrating minimum, maximum,and average content engagement scores within a specified timeframe,permitting a user to immediately compare current standing of a brandagainst previously-reported scores. Such elements may be clickable orselectable, or otherwise able to be interacted with by a user, such asto tailor their content—for example, a user might be able to click on aUI element 1301, allowing user to alter the timeframe being used forcomparison in the element's content. It will be appreciated by onehaving ordinary skill in the art that such elements and theirarrangement is exemplary, and arrangements and specific construction orcontent may vary according to the invention, and such variances may benecessary according to a variety of factors not relevant to or claimedby the invention—such as, as previously mentioned, a specific webbrowser or device a user is viewing an interface 1100 with.

FIG. 14 is an illustration of an exemplary web interface 1100 for aweb-based front-end application 510, particularly of a Reports tab 1114within an Analytics category 1101. As illustrated previously, anAnalytics category 1101 may display content comprising a company name,logo, or other identifying mark 1106, as well as further selectable tabssuch as Overview 1110, Analytics 1111, Audience 1112, Content 1113, orReports 1114. As illustrated, a Reports tab 1114 may display contentcomprising a text element 1401 displaying existing orpreviously-generated reports or (as illustrated in this exemplaryinterface) an alert notifying a user that no reports have beengenerated, a clickable or otherwise interactive button or similarelement 1402 allowing a user to generate a new report, and a table orsimilar element 1403 displaying a selection of potential report typeswhich may be generated. As illustrated, exemplary report types mayinclude but are not limited to an analytics report with competitorinformation 1412 which may display a comparative analysis of a user'sbrand's standing relative to selected competitors within an industry,competitive analysis report 1413 which may focus on an analysis only ofchosen competitors, followers report with overlap analysis 1414 whichmay analyze followers of a user's brand and any overlap (if any) withcompeting brands, followings report with overlap analysis 1415 which mayanalyze what other brands a user's followers are following and anyoverlap (if any) with competitors, or an engaged audience report 1416which may focus on followers of a user's brand that are determined to be“engaged” by an analytics server 606. Exemplary report types may also bedisplayed next to an icon or similar image element 1411, representing afile type which will be used for a generated report if selected. It willbe appreciated by one having ordinary skill in the art that suchelements and their arrangement is exemplary, and arrangements andspecific construction or content may vary according to the invention,and such variances may be necessary according to a variety of factorsnot relevant to or claimed by the invention—such as, as previouslymentioned, a specific web browser or device a user is viewing aninterface 1100 with. It will be further appreciated that the reporttypes shown are exemplary, and a wide variety of report types may bepossible according to the invention, as a wide variety of informationand combinations of data may be desirable to include in a report, andthat such report types may be user-configurable such that a user mayextend the functionality of an interface 1100 by tailoring availablereport types to their industry, brand, or any other customization whichmay be desirable or beneficial to a user.

FIG. 15 is an illustration of an exemplary web interface 1100 for aweb-based front-end application 510, particularly of a Testimonialscategory 1102. As illustrated previously, an Analytics tab 1101 maydisplay content comprising a company name, logo, or other identifyingmark 1106, as well as further selectable tabs such as Overview 1110,Analytics 1111, Audience 1112, Content 1113, or Reports 1114. Asillustrated, a Testimonials category 1102 may display content comprisinga text- or image-based list 1501 of displayed social media networks, adrop-down or similar menu element 1502 for sorting displayed contentpostings which may have a clickable or otherwise user-interactive buttonor similar element 1503 for expanding a drop-down menu, text fieldsdisplaying date information which may have clickable or otherwiseuser-interactive button or similar elements 1504 for selecting a daterange from which to display content postings, a header sectiondisplaying content posting type 1505, a search box 1506 where a user mayenter text to search for within content postings being displayed, and abody section 1510 which may display individual content postings andtheir content. Exemplary posting content may comprise a poster'spersonal information 1511 such as a profile image, username, date a postwas made, or other relevant personal information as well as an AudienceEngagement Rank, which scores the degree of engagement of a displayedposter relative to other members of an audience, as may be determined byone or more backend services 407. Further content which may be displayedmay include (but is not limited to) a testimonial score 1512 which mayrank a testimonial for relevance as determined by one or more backendservices 407, embedded posting content 1513 such as video or audio clipswhich may be playable directly from within interface 1100, post tags1514 as well as a text field or similar element 1515 which may allow auser to add custom tag for further identifying or grouping postings, anda clickable or otherwise user-interactive button or similar element 1516which may allow a user to view a posting directly in its nativeenvironment (such as, for example, viewing a Twitter™ post on theTwitter™ website rather than from within interface 1100). Furthercontent which might be displayed within a body element 1510 may include(but need not be limited to) a plurality of clickable, selectable, orotherwise user-interactive buttons, checkboxes, or similar interactiveelements allowing a posting to be marked or flagged according to contenttype—as illustrated, such types might include spam 1521, question 1522,feedback 1523, complaint 1524, or strong testimonial 1525, each of whichmay alter the manner in which a posting may be presented to a user—forexample, marking a post as “spam” may prevent it from appearing infurther lists or views, or marking it as a “strong testimonial” mightalter various metrics making use of ratings or scoring of postings,which may then be displayed in various views or aspects of an interface1100. It will be appreciated by one having ordinary skill in the artthat such elements and their arrangement is exemplary, and arrangementsand specific construction or content may vary according to theinvention, and such variances may be necessary according to a variety offactors not relevant to or claimed by the invention—such as, aspreviously mentioned, a specific web browser or device a user is viewingan interface 1100 with.

FIG. 16 is an illustration of an exemplary web interface 1100 for aweb-based front-end application 510, particularly of a Widgets category1103. As illustrated previously, an Analytics tab 1101 may displaycontent comprising a company name, logo, or other identifying mark 1106,as well as further selectable tabs such as Overview 1110, Analytics1111, Audience 1112, Content 1113, or Reports 1114. As illustrated, aWidgets category 1103 may comprise a plurality of tabs representingsubcategories such as a widget list 1601, widget themes 1602, orcreating a new widget 1603. Such tabs may be clickable, selectable, orotherwise user-interactive such that a user may use them to alter thedisplayed content of an interface 1100, for example a user might clickon a widget list tab 1601 to display a list of previously created andstored widgets. As illustrated, a new widget tab 1603 may presentcontent comprising a body section 1610 for the creation of a new dynamicwidget for inclusion in web pages or content, and a separate bodysection 1620 for setting up a plurality of filters or rules forautomatically or semi-automatically managing widgets or postings. Asillustrated, a widget creation element 1610 may further comprise aclickable or otherwise user-interactive element 1611 for adding an imageto a new widget, a text box or similar input element 1612 for selectinga title for a new widget, a text box or similar input element 1613 forthe input of description text for a widget, a text box or similar inputelement 1614 where a user may input notes for personal viewing only (notto be made available to other viewers of a widget), a clickable orotherwise user-interactive button or similar element 1615 which maypermit a user to preview a widget as it might appear to other viewers, aclickable or otherwise user-interactive button or similar element 1616for saving a new widget after optionally inputting various informationas described above, and a clickable or otherwise user-interactive buttonor similar element 1617 for closing a widget either before or aftersaving it (for example, if a user decides not to create a new widget atthis time, it may be optionally saved for future revision and creation,or discarded with no changes made). As illustrated, a filter setupelement 1620 may further comprise a plurality of organizational fieldspresenting a user with various metrics and options for management, suchas selecting specific social media networks 1621, inputting keywords forspecific inclusion or exclusion 1622, selecting content owners to whichrules may be applied 1623, or other various possible options notillustrated—for example, it may be desirable to maintain a list ofspecific social media posters for inclusion or exclusion based on rulesor even regardless of their actual posting content, and it will beappreciated that a variety of possibilities may be implemented accordingto the invention. It will be appreciated by one having ordinary skill inthe art that such elements and their arrangement is exemplary, andarrangements and specific construction or content may vary according tothe invention, and such variances may be necessary according to avariety of factors not relevant to or claimed by the invention—such as,as previously mentioned, a specific web browser or device a user isviewing an interface 1100 with.

FIG. 17 is an illustration of an exemplary web interface 1100 for aweb-based front-end application 510, particularly of a Campaignscategory 1104. As illustrated previously, an Analytics tab 1101 maydisplay content comprising a company name, logo, or other identifyingmark 1106, as well as further selectable tabs such as Overview 1110,Analytics 1111, Audience 1112, Content 1113, or Reports 1114. Asillustrated, a Campaigns category 1104 may present content comprising aplurality of clickable or otherwise user-interactive tabs such as fordisplaying a campaign summary 1701 or creating a new campaign 1702,which may permit a user to change the content being presented. Asillustrated, a campaign summary tab 1701 may further comprise aplurality of body elements 1710 each corresponding to a campaign andwhich may further comprise a progress tracking element 1711 which mayincorporate text or graphical elements to present a user with an overallmetric for campaign progress, a plurality of social media icons, images,or other identifiers 1712 which may notify a user of relevant socialmedia networks within the scope of a particular campaign, a body elementtracking key metrics 1713, such as mouse clicks or transactions (as maybe relevant to a campaign for an online store presence), and which mayinclude a button or other interactive element 1714 for viewingperformance as tracked by the metrics presented, a body element 1715presenting a user with date ranges or timeframes for a campaign, a bodyelement 1716 information regarding number of postings within or relevantto a campaign, and a plurality of clickable or otherwiseuser-interactive buttons or similar elements for performing actions withreference to a specific campaign. Such actions and their correspondingactions may include, but are not limited to, schedule a post in acampaign 1721, edit a campaigns details or information 1722, viewperformance information 1723, replicate a campaign (which may present auser with further refinements for a new replicated campaign) 1724, ordelete a campaign 1725. As illustrated, not all buttons may be presentfor any particular campaign, and it will be appreciated by one havingordinary skill in the art that such elements and their arrangement isexemplary, and arrangements and specific construction or content mayvary according to the invention, and such variances may be necessaryaccording to a variety of factors not relevant to or claimed by theinvention—such as, as previously mentioned, a specific web browser ordevice a user is viewing an interface 1100 with.

Description of Method Embodiments

FIG. 9 is a method flow diagram illustrating the general process bywhich social networking data is processed and handled by backendservices. As illustrated, in step 901 one or more crawlers as describedpreviously retrieves relevant data from social networking sites, such asa customer's personal information or product and service testimonials,or information pertaining to a company's competition. This data is sentto analytics server 606 in step 902 for processing. In step 903,analytics server checks the data for relevant information as describedpreviously, comparing it against a plurality of metrics to score thedata according to such qualities as relevance, likelihood and strengthof propagation, and indicators of positive or negative sentiment orintent of the data's creator or poster. As before, such metrics areexemplary and it will be appreciated that there are many ways to utilizedata gathered. The data is then ranked by the analytics server in step904 according to the analysis results, and data is then selected aseither positive, or negative in overall quality. In step 905, negativedata is sent to a human agent for special handling without beingpresented to any front-end services or interfaces such as embeddedwidgets. In step 906, positive data is approved for display and added toa data store to be utilized in embedded widgets and other endpoints asconfigured by a user, as described previously.

FIG. 10 is a method flow diagram illustrating the general process bywhich a new user may initiate a campaign. In step 1001, a new businessuser registers with the system. In step 1002 user then provides someinitial data about their business, such as keywords relevant to theirproducts or goals, names of persons within the industry, or otherrelevant information such as competitors' products or service reviews.System then reaches out to connect to various social networking media,such as FACEBOOK™, LINKEDIN™, TWITTER™, or any of a number of additionalsocial media networks in step 1003. In step 1004 user then providesinformation on competitors, such as keywords or names as before. System400 then collects data from various social media networks in step 1005and analyzes gathered data in step 1006 according to various metrics asdescribed previously. Results of analysis are presented to user in step1007 for review, and user then has the option to launch a campaign instep 1008. Once launched, system 400 monitors results of campaign andgenerates reports in step 1009 for review and refinement. It will beappreciated that this analysis and reporting does not necessarilyrequire a human user, and could be reasonably automated according to theinvention and it will be further appreciated that various configurationsof manual or automated refinement are possible and could be configurablevia user interface applications as described previously.

According to a particular arrangement, during a campaign it may benecessary or desirable to request permissions to a user's social networkcontent, such as a user-uploaded image, or a text posting such as aproduct review. Many different means of gaining permission may beutilized according to the nature of the arrangement or the particularsocial media content in question, for example “ad hoc” permissions,permissions on brand sites, or “back end” permissions available tocontent creators or web developers such as via a web interface, app, orportal.

“Ad hoc” permissions may be requested for individual content postingssuch as product reviews or user uploads such as images or videos,generally by utilizing in-place communication methods native to aparticular social media network the content is available on. Forexample, if a user posts a review on TWITTER™, permission to use theirposting may be requested in the form of a message or reply to theiroriginal message within the TWITTER™ communication network. In apreferred arrangement as envisioned by the inventor, a campaign managermay request permission (continuing the example using TWITTER™) usingcommon keywords or “hashtags” as are common in social media networks,for example by sending a message to the content uploader containing arequest for permission and instructions to respond using specific tagsor phrases (such as “reply with #yes to agree or #no to decline”). Ifthe content uploader then replies using the correct tag or phrase, thecampaign manager now knows whether they have the uploader's consent touse their content, either manually or automatically such as via textrecognition software during processing of the message reply or posting,as described above.

Permissions on brand sites may be presented in the form of a commoncheckbox or similar interactive element in a web interface or submissionform, such as “check this box to agree to the terms and conditions”, asis common in the art. In this manner, when a user is in the process ofsubmitting a review or uploading content to a brand website or through abrand's software app (such as using a mobile device, for example tosubmit a product photo taken on the mobile device), they may be promptedto give their consent to have their content used by the brand manager asa requisite for submission. It should be appreciated that consent itselfmay or may not be required for submission, but it may generally berequired that the user acknowledges that they have been presented withthe choice and have decided whether or not to consent—thus giving acampaign manager a clear indicator of user consent without anyadditional action being required.

Various “back end” permissions may be obtained through web portals orsoftware applications for users or brand managers, for example in theform of an online user profile where they may specify what type ofpermissions they agree to, or other configuration options such asnotifications when their content is reused in a campaign or permissionis requested for content that they have not yet given permission for. Inthis manner, individual users may easily define broad rules for contentpermission in a “set and forget” style of permission management,encouraging individual social media users to participate by ensuring theprocess is easy and convenient. Brand managers may define baseline rulesfor their brand, such as for a company website or online storefront, forexample to define permissions regarding product images or promotions,again encouraging participation. Additionally, using such “back end”permission management, users may curate their permission settings at alater time, such as by viewing a profile or configuration interface as apart of their social media profile or web management portal, where theymay be presented with a summary of permissions that have been granted ordeclined, or any rules they may have configured previously.

A further extension of such permissions systems, may be the disclosureof permissions within or in addition to content postings. For example,when social media content is processed for use in a campaign asdescribed above (referring to FIG. 10), any applicable permissions maybe identified and associated with the content. When the content ispresented to a campaign manager for review, applicable permissions maybe presented with the content so the user immediately knows what contentmay be available for use or what users may have given consent to havetheir current or future content used. This approach may enable easiercampaign creation and management by removing any additional steps oroperations to identify or obtain permissions from users, insteadconsolidating content and permissions into a single campaign preparationoperation according to the methods of the invention.

The skilled person will be aware of a range of possible modifications ofthe various embodiments described above. Accordingly, the presentinvention is defined by the claims and their equivalents.

What is claimed is:
 1. A system for brand management using socialnetworks comprising: an application server computer comprising programcode stored in a memory and adapted to connect to a data network andcomprising at least a message handling software module acting as amessage bus; a plurality of social network crawler software modulesoperating on a server computer connected to the data network; aplurality of third party service integration software modules operatingon a server computer connected to the data network; an analytics serversoftware module operating on a server computer connected to the datanetwork; a report generator software module operating on a servercomputer connected to the data network; a search engine software moduleoperating on a server computer connected to the data network; abehavioral analysis engine software module operating on a servercomputer connected to the data network; a recommendation engineoperating on a server computer connected to the data network; and adatabase connected to the data network; wherein a user registers withthe application server and provides a plurality of data elementspertaining to a brand associated with the user, and the user providescredentials enabling the plurality of social network crawlers toretrieve data relevant to the brand from a plurality of social networksusing the credentials; wherein, upon initially and periodicallyretrieving content from a plurality of social networks pertaining to thebrand, the analytics server module analyzes the content pertaining tothe brand to determine a plurality of indicia of content value specificto the brand among members of the plurality of social networks; whereinthe behavioral analysis engine obtains a plurality of content elementsgenerated by a first member of one or more social networks and analyzesthe first member's social behavior in order to compute an indicia of anaudience value of the first member; and wherein the report generatorprepares and makes available to the user a plurality of reports specificto the brand, the reports comprising at least the indicia of contentvalue, the indicia of audience value, and at least one recommendationfrom the recommendation engine to assist the user in improvingperception of or engagement with the brand by the plurality of members.2. The system of claim 1, wherein the plurality of data elementspertaining to a brand associated with the user comprise at least aplurality of permissions information elements pertaining to the dataelements.
 3. The system of claim 2, wherein the plurality of permissionsinformation elements further comprises at least an agreement of consentfrom the user regarding the use of the data elements.
 4. The system ofclaim 1, wherein the plurality of content elements comprise at least aplurality of permissions information elements pertaining to the contentelements.
 5. The system of claim 4, wherein the plurality of permissionsinformation elements further comprises at least an agreement of consentfrom the user regarding the use of the content elements.